Episode 31 : Can a person of color exclude race and culture from their art?

Every Day Conversation On Race with guests Svea Vikander and Tramaine de Senna

Svea Vikander, artist, therapist and host of radio show Art Crush brings Tramaine de Senna to the show. As a white woman, raised in Canada and from a Swedish background, Svea look at was she can eliminate hate and stop racism, with a particular interest in using art to do that.

Tramaine de Senna –in conversation on race talks about being African-American, Chinese, Native American and European and ways in which it impacts her art

While a mixture of different backgrounds, Tramaine is also light skinned and sometimes mistaken for White. Not knowing her background there have been times when people have made racist comments about people of color to her, thinking that she would agree with them.

She has been influenced by the work of Adrian Piper who is also mixed-race and uses that in her art.

Tramaine shares how different forms and types of art are a result of history and people expressing their own history and culture in their art.

Other topics include:

Cultural Appropriation in art- what it is and what it isn’t

Cultural Appropriation used as a form of power

How race and being mixed race impacted her in the beginning – she didn’t think she could be an artist because she was mixed race

Do artists have to be poor?

The intersection of race and class

Being a person of color and an expatriate in Belgium

Role of white people in talking about race, not getting defensive, and not making everything